The widow of one of Britain's leading lawyers has won the first stage of a multi-million pound legal action against Four Seasons Hotel & Resorts at the British High Court.
Lady Brownlie’s husband Professor Sir Ian Brownlie and daughter Rebecca were killed on safari whilst staying at the Four Seasons in Cairo, Egypt in 2010, reports The Telegraph.
Professor Sir Ian Brownlie CBE QC, 77, a distinguished international barrister, was killed in Yusuf Al Siddique, Egypt, on January 3, 2010, whilst on a chauffeur driven safari tour of the country's monuments with his wife, daughter and two grandchildren. Lady Christine Brownlie was badly injured in the crash whilst the two grand children escaped unharmed.
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The family had reportedly been staying in the Four Seasons Hotel in Cairo, where they had seen the tour advertised in an official brochure, and Lady Brownlie is seeking millions of pounds in damages form the Canadian hotel chain.
Four Seasons Holdings have argued that the English courts have no jurisdiction to hear the case and that Lady Brownlie should seek justice in Egypt, which has been gripped by unrest since the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
However, Mr Justice Tugendhat has now opened the way for her to bring the case before the British courts by clarifying that Lady Brownlie had booked the limousine tour by phoning the hotel's concierge from England shortly before their departure.
He warned the company that their actions risked making them look like a “secretive and irresponsible organisation” which was trying to deny justice to a widow and two orphans.
The tour had been advertised in a 12-page brochure she had picked up in the hotel's lobby whist holidaying there the year before. The brochure was addressed to 'Dear Guests' and signed by the hotel's chief concierge.
Invoking the corporate veil, Four Seasons Holdings pointed out that it did not own the hotel, employ any of the staff or have any role in its management. The limo driver also worked for an Egyptian car hire company.
But the judge said it was “strongly arguable” that Lady Brownlie's contract with the concierge was struck in England and that Four Seasons Holdings were “the other contracting party”. That, he ruled, was enough to give the English court’s jurisdiction to hear Lady Brownlie's claim.
"In conducting themselves as they have, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts may appear to readers of this judgment to be a secretive and irresponsible organisation, intent on obstructing access to justice by their widowed guest and, indirectly, their deceased guest's two orphaned grandchildren, all of whom suffered or died in an allegedly unsafe vehicle provided to them by Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts," said Mr Justice Tugendhat.
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